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What is time? This is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask. Traditionally, the answer was that time is a product of the human mind, or of the motion of celestial bodies. In the mid-seventeenth century, a new kind of answer emerged: time or eternal duration is 'absolute', in the sense that it is independent of human minds and material bodies.
Emily Thomas explores the development of absolute time or eternal duration during one of Britain's richest and most creative metaphysical periods, from the 1640s to the 1730s. She introduces an interconnected set of main characters - Henry More, Walter Charleton, Isaac Barrow, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Samuel Clarke, and John Jackson - alongside a large and varied supporting cast, whose metaphysical views are all read in their historical context and given a place in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century development of thought about time.
List of contents
- Introduction
- 1: Scene Setting: Time, Philosophy, and Seventeenth Century Britain
- 2: Henry More and the Development of Absolute Time
- 3: A Continental Interlude: Time in van Helmont, Gassendi, and Charleton
- 4: Space and Time in Isaac Barrow: A Modal Relationist Metaphysic
- 5: Early British Reactions to Absolutism: 1664 to 1687
- 6: Newton's De Gravitatione on God and his Emanative Effects
- 7: Locke's Steadfast Time and Space Relationism
- 8: Later British Reactions to Absolutism: 1690-1704
- 9: Samuel Clarke's Evolving Morean Absolutism
- 10: Last Battles over Absolutism: 1704 Onwards
- Conclusion
About the author
Emily Thomas is Assistant Professor in Philosphy at Durham University. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge (2013) and held a postdoc at the University of Groningen (2013-2016) before arriving at Durham. She mostly works on space and time in the history of philosophy, and is especially fond of excavating the work of philosophically rich but understudied figures.
Summary
What is time? This is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask. Emily Thomas explores how a new theory of time emerged in the seventeenth century. The 'absolute' theory of time held that it is independent of material bodies or human minds, so even if nothing else existed (with the possible exception of God) there would be time.
Additional text
this is a fascinating book. Whether you agree or disagree with any particular thesis in it, it will make you rethink, look afresh at familiar writings, and with interest at unfamiliar ones
Report
Thomas's book contains a number of productive discussions, and it could prove a catalyst for further investigations into early modern spatiotemporal metaphysics. Edward Slowik, Journal of the History of Philosophy
